Women of Italian and Syracuse Heritage CNY

Dear friends of WISH CNY,
You may have noticed the past few weeks that we have been featuring both men and women in our posts. This is because we have changed our membership (and our name) to be non-gendered! We are now “We of Italian and Syracuse and Heritage CNY.”

The founding members began this group with the immediate goals of replacing the statue of Christopher Columbus (Cristoffa Corombo) in the city center of Syracuse NY, challenging oppressive patriarchal representations of Italian and Italian-American histories, and supporting healing changes to statue culture in the US. We are embracing the universal need for solidarity.

We are accepting new members regardless of gender orientation- and you don’t have to be of Italian ancestry either, but you should have a strong connection to Syracuse, NY and care about Italian culture and history.

Join us for as we continue:

-Engaging in community dialogue and leadership to remove and replace the Columbus monument in Syracuse’s city center with images that honor our Italian values rooted in la campagnia, la gioia, and la guarigione (country, joy and healing):

-Participating in the City of Syracuse’s process to create Heritage Park in the city center

-Educating about the impacts of colonization and the Doctrine of Discovery

-Supporting the sovereignty of the Onondaga Nation

-Growing Italian-American partnerships throughout the region and the US

To learn more, take a look at our website, (wishcny.org) speak with someone about joining our group, or to be added to our email list, or contact us by email at [email protected].

Ciao,

Colleen, MaryAnn, Tarki, Cindy, Hil, Allison, Donna, Paul, and Jack

Few Americans recall exactly why the two men were arrested, what went on at their trial or why emotions were stirred so powerfully around the world by the plight of two humble Italian immigrants, characterized forever by Vanzetti as “a good shoemaker and a poor fish peddler” in an interview with The New York World. “Sacco and Vanzetti,” Bruce Watson’s spirited history of the affair, does a great service in rescuing fact from the haze of legend and disentangling Sacco and Vanzetti from the symbols they all too quickly became. It restores immediacy to a wretched series of events that first need to be understood on their own terms. When two payroll guards were murdered in a daylight robbery in Braintree, Mass., in April 1920, frantic police officers tracked down what they thought was the getaway car. Sacco and Vanzetti turned up a few nights later to claim the car, carrying loaded pistols. The police pounced. the prosecution paraded a motley lineup of shaky eyewitnesses, most of them pressured or threatened; befuddled the jury with ambiguous ballistics reports; browbeat the many Italian witnesses who vouched for the whereabouts of the defendants on the day of the murders; and, not least, relied on the astounding incompetence of Sacco and Vanzetti’s idealistic but badly overmatched lawyer. The two men would spend the next seven years in jail, protesting their innocence to the end. Pleas, motions and appeals proved futile. The judicial system, forming a perfect circle, simply ratified its own errors. At one point, the state’s Supreme Judicial Court decided that Judge Thayer himself should rule on a legal writ accusing him of bias in the case. “Prejudice?” he declared from the bench. “There isn’t any now and there never was at any time.”they were executed in August 1927.
New York Times, Prejudice and Politics: Sacco, Vanzetti and Fear, William Grimes-Aug. 15, 2007
Photo Boston Public Lib.

Che bella notizia!

"...the new “Cayuga Nation Tribal Court” of... Clint Halftown... [is] not worthy of honoring in state court."

BREAKING NEWS: JULY 3, 2024-- NYS Supreme Court, Appeals Department, rules against illegitimate "Cayuga Nation Tribal Court"! This represents a hard won victory for Cayuga Nation citizens! See https://linktr.ee/gayogohono for more info and other news.

This WISH WEDNESDAY we recognize Robert Anthony De Niro (1943) is an American actor, producer and director. He catapulted to fame when he was cast as the young Vito Corleone in the 1974 film The Godfather Part II, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. After Taxi Driver, De Niro collaborated with Scorsese on the musical drama New York, New York which was a box-office failure, and its disappointing reception drove Scorsese into depression and drugs. While Scorsese was in rehab, De Niro asked him to read Raging Bull: My Story, a book about boxer Jake LaMotta, which Scorsese threw away and said was “full of sh*t”.After nearly dying from a drug overdose, Scorsese agreed to make the film.Raging Bull (1980) received widespread critical acclaim and De Niro received the Academy Award for Best Actor. Among his many achievements and awards he received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2003, the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2010, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2016. Robert De Niro has always been proud of his Italian heritage; in fact, his great-grandparents were natives of the southern Italian region of Molise. He was awarded the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance in The Godfather II, where he spoke the Sicilian dialect for which he is notoriously known.However, his command of the Italian language is debatable. According to some reports, Robert De Niro learned Italian as an adult to honor his father and cultural heritage, though the information is not verifiable. One of the most renowned actors of all time, Robert De Niro, has had a career spanning more than five decades. He is renowned for his nuanced and intense performances, frequently taking on characters who are troubled and complex.
Photo Credit Alex Prager for The New York Times

A great time was had by all at our celebration picnic yesterday for the 4th Anniversary of WISH. Old friends and new friends, bocce ball, great food, traditional Italian folk songs(and of course Lois Prima!) Italian cookie tray(yum) and an evening walk to the falls. Thanks go out to all our buddies for your ongoing support.

Bring your bocce balls and dish to pass! It will be fun for the whole family.

This WISH WEDNESDAY we honor Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci ( 1452- 1519) who was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially rested on his achievements as a painter, he has also become known for his notebooks, in which he made drawings and notes on a variety of subjects, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, and palaeontology. Leonardo is widely regarded to have been a genius who epitomised the Renaissance humanist ideal,and his collective works comprise a contribution to later generations of artists matched only by that of his younger contemporary Michelangelo. Although he is best known for his dramatic and expressive artwork, Leonardo also conducted dozens of carefully thought out experiments and created futuristic inventions that were groundbreaking for the time. His keen eye and quick mind led him to make important scientific discoveries, yet he never published his ideas. Born out of wedlock to a successful notary and a lower-class woman in, or near, Vinci, he was educated in Florence by the Italian painter and sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio. He began his career in the city, but then spent much time in Milan. Later, he worked in Florence, as well as Rome, all while attracting a large following of imitators and students. One of the great Renaissance painters, Leonardo da Vinci continually tested artistic traditions and techniques. He created innovative compositions, investigated anatomy to accurately represent the human body, considered the human psyche to illustrate character, and experimented with methods of representing space and three-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional surface. The result of his inexhaustible curiosity is many unfinished projects but also some of the most lifelike, complex, and tender representations of human nature.At his death in 1519, Leonardo left many notebooks filled with jottings and sketches but very few finished works. Some of his pieces were completed by assistants, but others were lost, destroyed, or overpainted.

This WISH WEDNESDAY we learn about one of Italy’s most notorious gangsters. Maria Licciardi (1951) is an Italian criminal mafia boss, affiliated with the Camorra, head of the Licciardi clan, and one of the bosses of the Secondigliano Alliance.She was one of the most powerful bosses of the Camorra in the city of Naples from 1993 until her arrest and imprisonment in 2001- released in 2009 then imprisoned again in 2021. The powerful Camorra clans controlled drug trafficking and the extortion rackets in many suburbs of Naples. Licciardi rose to power and took over as head of the clan, after her two brothers, Pietro and Vincenzo, and her husband were arrested. She was the first female Camorrista to become the boss of the Licciardi clan, The reign of Maria Licciardi ran smoothly for many years, until a disagreement arose over a consignment of pure, unrefined he**in. In the spring of 1999, a large consignment of he**in arrived from Istanbul, Turkey. Licciardi decreed it should not be sold, as it was too pure and strong for the average user, and would thus kill those who purchased it, harming the alliance’s large customer base of drug users. However, the Lo Russo clan, who had always chafed under her leadership, disagreed and packaged the shipment for sale on the street. The sale of the packets of unrefined he**in resulted in the deaths of many drug addicts across Naples, eleven of whom died in April 1999 alone. This caused great public outrage and resulted in massive police crackdowns on the Camorra clans. Many Camorristi were arrested and subsequently imprisoned.the photo is her 2001 mug shot.

You are invited to WISH CNY's 1st community picnic at Pratt's Falls on June 30th!

More info and RSVP here:

WISH CNY Community Potluck Picnic, June 30th- RSVP here! Ciao! RSVP below and join our 1st community gathering to enjoy compagnia and cena and celebrate 3 years of WISH CNY. Share with your friends and family! When: 4-7 pm, June 30th (Sunday) What: WISH CNY Community Gathering (Potluck, hiking available, Italian cookie table!) Where: Pratt's Falls County....

Judith Beatrice Bari (November 7, 1949 – March 2, 1997) was an American environmentalist, feminist, and labor leader, primarily active in Northern California after moving to the state in the mid-1970s. In the 1980s and 1990s, she was the principal organizer of Earth First! campaigns against logging in the ancient redwood forests of Mendocino County and related areas. She also organized Industrial Workers of the World Local 1 in an effort to bring together timber workers and environmentalists of Earth First! in common cause. On May 24, 1990, a car being driven by Judi was blown up by a bomb in Oakland, California. She and fellow activist Darryl Cherney survived the blast, but Bari suffered crippling injuries to her pelvis that left the mother of two in pain for the rest of her life. Bari had proven herself remarkably effective in rallying public support to save the ancient redwood forests of northern California from clear-cutting. But she had also made enemies in the logging industry, receiving many death threats and having her car rammed by a logging truck. The car-bombing made national headlines, with Oakland police and FBI bomb experts quickly placing the blame on Bari and Cherney, even though it was clear that the bomb had been placed directly under the driver’s seat. In order to clear their names and derail a COINTELPRO-style frame-up, they filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the police and the FBI. Howard Zinn offered to provide expert testimony in the case, as is outlined in his letter to the lead counsel.Bari had panic attacks when she learned that the FBI’s lead bomb expert had conducted a “bomb school” for police officers on the property of Louisiana-Pacific Lumber Company one month before the car bombing. But she persevered with her forest-defense activism, until she succumbed to breast cancer at age 47 in 1997.In 2002, a jury found that the Oakland police department and the FBI had blatantly lied about the case and awarded $4.4 million in damages. A bill was passed to establish the Headwaters Forest Reserve (H.R. 2107, Title V. Sec.501.[1]) under administration by the Bureau of Land Management. This protected 7,472 acres.

Fede Galizia was an Italian Renaissance painter who lived from 1578 to 1630. She was born in Milan and was the daughter of a prominent miniaturist painter, Nunzio Galizia. Writings from when she was alive describe Galizia as a prodigy, but unfortunately, little else is known about her life. Galizia’s work is characterized by exceptional attention to detail and the ability to capture the delicate textures and colors of flowers and fruit. Galizia’s work is coveted today, having been part of several auctions and sales in the twenty-first century. One reason for the demand for these paintings is their unfiltered naturalism and their ability to capture the beauty and fragility of the natural world.



Unlike many women artists of the time, Galizia was able to produce a diverse body of work. For example, she was well known for her portraits and public commissions for altarpieces in Milanese churches, and her fruit and flower paintings are some of the earliest of any Italian artists. The uniqueness of Galizia’s still life paintings makes her a pioneer in her field during the Italian Renaissance.

This WISH WEDNESDAY let’s Learn about adult entertainer Ann Corio (born Ann Coiro; November 29, 1909 – March 1, 1999) who was a prominent American burlesque stripper and actress. Her original surname was Coiro, changing it to Corio for stage purposes and because some family members did not approve of her profession. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, she was one of twelve children of Italian immigrant parents. While still in her teens, Corio’s good looks and shapely physique landed her showgirl roles that led to her becoming a hugely popular st******se artist. Her rise to stardom as a featured performer began on the Mutual burlesque circuit in 1925. She later worked at Minsky’s Burlesque in New York City and Boston’s Old Howard Theatre. After Mayor Fiorello La Guardia closed down New York City’s burlesque houses in 1939, Corio made her way to Los Angeles. Between 1941 and 1944 she appeared in several Hollywood “B” motion pictures which featured her in scanty costumes (beginning with 1941 Swamp Woman), the best known of which was perhaps 1942’s Jungle Siren opposite Buster Crabbe. Corio had a long successful career dancing on stage. In 1962 she put together the nostalgic off-Broadway show This Was Burlesque which she directed and in which also performed. In 1968, she wrote a book with the same title. Her fame was enduring enough that in the 1970s—when Corio was long retired and in her sixties—she twice was a guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Corio is a member of the Hall of Fame at the Exotic World Burlesque Museum in Las Vegas, Nevada.

On Saturday, June 1 beginning at 1:30 PM, we will be hosting Witness to Injustice at the Museum. We will join Neighbors of the Onondaga Nation (NOON) and Haudenosaunee facilitators as we participate in learning and dialogue through this exercise. The Witness to Injustice Exercise is a unique three-hour interactive group teaching tool. It uses participatory education to share the disturbing history of what Indigenous Peoples have experienced through colonization.

The Erie Canal Museum acknowledges it is located on the unceded lands of the Onondaga Nation, Central Firekeepers of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. The Erie Canal itself is located on the homelands of all members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy: the Mohawk, Oneida, Tuscarora, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca nations. We recognize that the Erie Canal played a major role in the disruption of their traditional ways of living, negative effects of which linger to this day. Here at the Erie Canal Museum we are committed to taking actions to do our small part in addressing these wrongs through education and inclusion.

We invite you to join us in this. You can register here: https://eriecanalmuseum.org/event/witness-to-injustice/.

This Wish Wednesday we learn about writer, Edvige Giunta (1959) who was born and raised in Sicily, Italy, where she studied at the University of Catania. She moved to the United States to study literature at the University of Miami, where she received an M.A. and a Ph.D. in English. A regular contributor to Italian American studies and a founder of the field, Edvige Giunta is the author of Writing with an Accent: Contemporary Italian American Women Authors (Palgrave 2002). Collaboration, community-building, and supporting the work of other writers has been central in her work as a writer and an educator. She has coedited six anthologies. Working closely with publishers, she has promoted the recognition of Italian and Italian American women writers. Classics such as Paper Fish by Tina De Rosa, Umbertina by Helen Barolini, and Vertigo by Louise DeSalvo were reprinted by The Feminist Press with her accompanying essays. As a Professor of English at New Jersey City University, she has trained scores of students in the art of memoir. At NJCU, she has created the first course to be exclusively devoted to the study of the Triangle fire, which continues to be, like so many of her courses, a place for students to flourish intellectually and creatively and produce original work. She has taught memoir workshops for writers of all backgrounds and levels. Her accessible, hands-on approach to the craft of memoir makes her workshop enjoyable, uplifting, and productive gathering spaces for writers.
She has completed “No Confetti for the Dead: On Belated Grief,” a memoir moored in the space between her homeland of Sicily and North America.
She is married and has two children.

This wish Wednesday (a little late, but worth the wait) I would like to give a shout out to Gloria Josephine Ruta Eagan, also known as GloJo my dear, beautiful mom. She was born in 1932 in little Italy Syracuse, New York and was raised in a single parent family by her Italian father Antonio Roosevelt who then helped raise me. He was a shoemaker at Nettletons(never could afford a pair for himself) very near his apartment and he raised her despite the many struggles of a dad raising a daughter. At a very young age, she fell in love with a charismatic Irish golden gloves boxer, with a bad temper when he had too much to drink. She endured his abusive, alcoholic behavior until he walked out leaving her with three children 6 and under. She turned her life around through job re-training ending the cycle of welfare, when Sid Johnson-then the Superintendent of Syracuse City Schools, told her she was going to run the payroll department which she did until her retirement. She and her sister blended their families together each weekend and their five children grew up as “free range” kids enjoying the outdoors and fun on the “nort side.” She was a beloved outspoken union leader and advocated for getting folks what they deserved. She went on to become a bar tender at a bar on North Salina Street and was quite the dancer in her day. She and her sister Pat were real head turners. She went on to become a leader in her church, St. Vincent de Paul’s as head of their Legion of Mary and Alter Rosary Society providing free receptions to grieving families after funeral services. She is a sharp card player, stellar crochet artisan and all around amazing Nona and mother. She lives in the same home she bought 56 years ago and winters in New Smyrna Beach with her family where she plays golf frequently.(The card game!)

Franca Viola (born 9 January 1948) is a Sicilian woman who became famous in the 1960s in Italy for refusing a “rehabilitating marriage” (Italian: matrimonio riparatore) to her ra**st after being kidnapped, held hostage for over one week, and r**edfrequently. In 1966, Italy was rocked by one woman’s courageous efforts to challenge the country’s treatment of r**e victims — the lessons of which are sadly still relevant. She is considered to be the first Italian woman who had been r**ed to publicly refuse marriage. She and her family successfully prosecuted the ra**st. Franca Viola became a symbol of the cultural progress and the emancipation of women in post-war Italy. The trial had a wide resonance in Italy, as Viola’s behavior clashed with traditional social conventions in Southern Italy, whereby a woman would lose her honour if she refused to marry the man to whom she had lost her virginity. Franca Viola became a symbol of the cultural progress and emancipation of women in post-war Italy.

This WISH WEDNESDAY, check out Tullia d’Aragona (1501/1505 –1556) who was an Italian poet, author, and philosopher. Born in Rome sometime between 1501 and 1505, Tullia traveled throughout Venice, Ferrara, Siena, and Florence before returning to Rome. Throughout her life, Tullia was esteemed one of the best female writers, poets, and philosophers of her time. Influencing many of the most famous philosophers, Tullia’s work elevated women’s status in literature to equal that of men. Her intellect, literary abilities, and social graces helped her become among the most celebrated of Renaissance poet-courtesans.

This WISH WEDNESDAY, did you know that Kaley Christine Cuoco (1985) is an American actress of Italian American heritage? She is known for starring as Penny on the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory (2007–2019) and as the title character in the HBO Max comedic thriller The Flight Attendant (2020–2022).The latter earned her nominations for Primetime Emmy Awards and Golden Globe Awards. Her father is of Italian descent while her mother is of English and German ancestry. Cuoco was home-schooled, and lived in Ventura County, California with her family. On stage, she has performed in Los Angeles-area productions of “Annie” and “Fiddler on the Roof”. When she is not acting, Cuoco is an avid tennis player, who in earlier years had consistently been ranked well in Southern California Tennis Association standings as a member of a regional amateur division team. In early 2022 Cuoco began dating actor Tom Pelphrey. The two made their first public appearance as a couple at a Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony and now have a daughter-Mathilda.

This WISH WEDNESDAY we learn about Carla Carli Mazzucato (1935) a 20th-century Italian artist whose contributions to the world of contemporary art helped define the “modern expressionist” movement.[1] Known for her unique style and bold color palette, her paintings are described by critics as “dynamic,”[2] “graceful”,[3] “timeless,”[4] and have been compared to the masterworks of Chagall, Renoir, Monet and Van Gogh.[5]
Mazzucato’s art is part of numerous collections in Europe, North America and Asia. Her commissioned work, “Evening at the Opera” hangs in the Detroit Opera Houseand the artist’s fourteen-painting contemporary interpretation of the Passion of Christ is part of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese collection installed in the church of Corpus Domini in Bolzano, Italy. Mazzucato was recognized as a leading contemporary artist by the SoHo Fine Arts Institute in New York City in 2000.

This WISH Wednesday, we shout out to RoseAnn DeMoro, (pictured at left) the former executive director of National Nurses United and the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee and a former national vice president and executive board member of the AFL–CIO. DeMoro was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1949 and grew up in a working-class neighborhood. She earned a degree in women’s studies from Southern Illinois University. She married in 1968 and after college, she and her husband moved to Santa Barbara, California, where she began to work on a PhD in sociology. During that time, she worked as an organizer for the American Federation of Teachers and the University of California clerical workers. She gave up her studies to work for the Teamsters as the first female organizer for the Western Conference of Teamsters. DeMoro later described the sexism she experienced at the Teamsters as “intolerable,” and in 1986, she took a collective bargaining position at the California Nurses Association. DeMoro was the former executive director of National Nurses United, the largest professional and labor organization of registered nurses in the United States. Accolades for DeMoro and her work from across the U.S. and globally poured at her retirement in 2018. In the Chronicle, Sen. Bernie Sanders termed her “very tough” and “an invaluable ally.” Consumer legend Ralph Nader called her “the greatest labor organizer of her time.” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka heralded her “iron will.” And California Gov. Jerry Brown praised her as a “fighting labor leader from the old school. She gets things done.”RoseAnn, who transformed the California Nurses Association and National Nurses United into one of the most influential and fastest growing unions in the U.S. She shepherded an organization that has made an enormous impact in achieving unprecedented gains for nurses, patients, and has become a key figure in progressive social change movements.
DeMoro has been named “America’s Best & Brightest”by Esquire magazine, dubbed “The Most Influential Woman You’ve Never Heard Of” by More magazine.

This WISH WEDNESDAY we learn about Trotula of Salerno (late 11th-12th century) who was an expert diagnostician and clinician. Ever heard of a book called The Trotula?It’s one of the most important medical texts of the middle ages. Actually, it’s a trio of texts. The Trotula is the collected teachings and writings of doctors and healers, starring the work of Trotula of Salerno.
Trotula was famous for her expertise in the then-perplexing treatment of birth complications.“TROTULA THE GREAT HEALER,” SEEN IN THIS FOURTEENTH-CENTURY BOOK ILLUSTRATION, HOLDING A URINE FLASK.But what would a medically inclined gal like you do after the eventual decline of the Salerno School in the 1300s?
Perhaps you hocked your trousseau and rode to Northern Italy? Because it was there you could study at one of pre-modern Europe’s most prominent institutions of learning. At the University of Bologna you would become a scholar at the place women and science were reaching unprecedented heights in the Western World.Trota’s status as a medical author is most strikingly documented by a work found uniquely in a late 12th-century manuscript, the Codex Salernitanus, that was held in the city library of the Polish town of Wrocław (Breslau). How the manuscript arrived in Poland is unclear, since it seems (based on the handwriting of its scribes) to have been written in France. Wrocław, Stadtbibliothek, MS 1302, was destroyed in bombing during World War II, but major portions of it had been published in the previous century. Check out this great blog to learn about other Italian women scientists! https://thecharmedstudio.com/10-greatest-italian-female-scientists/

https://linktr.ee/SyracuseCeasefireResolution

We are excited to present 𝙃𝙤𝙡𝙡𝙮 𝙉𝙚𝙖𝙧 𝙞𝙣 𝘾𝙤𝙣𝙘𝙚𝙧𝙩 on Tuesday, April 30 @ 7pm, Plymouth Church in downtown Syracuse.

𝘗𝘩𝘰𝘵𝘰 𝘊𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘵𝘦𝘴𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘐𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘦 𝘠𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘨

Purchase tickets online at bit.ly/HollyNearTickets

To purchase tickets by phone - call 315-428-8151, leave a message and choir staff will return your call. A very limited number of tickets will be available at the door.

Your ticket purchase makes a difference! Part of the proceeds benefits the Syracuse Community Choir.

Fore More info visit our website at https://syracusecommunitychoir.org/event/holly-near-in-concert/

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